How to build decentralized social networks

Introduction #

As free and open source software folks, we usually don’t like the fact that social media giants (twitter, facebook) are closed-source software and have little concern for their user’s privacy.

To cope with this, we tend to try and replicate their functionality, but because we believe in a open and neutral internet, we always seek to build software that is “decentralized”.

This has given a some great open-source projects such as diaspora or the whole framasoft project, but let’s face it, it’s still hard to explain to our friends and family why they should go away from the corporate giants…

Let’s not forget that building truly de-centralized software is hard, building monolithic sites is much easier.

So, what should we do?

Spoiler #

Here is the idea:

• We create the most simple twitter clone we can named ynxice¹
• We do everything we can to make sure deploying a ynxice instance is really easy
• We make sure than no ynxice instance can hold more than 300 users

Yup, the fact there can’t be more than 300 users is a feature.

To Be Continued … #

Note: this is a copy of an abstract I’ve submitted to FOSDEM for a lighting talk, but I since realized I’ve missed the deadline.

• It’s possible I’ll be able to give the talk anyway, but I won’t know the date in advance, sorry.
• Whatever happens, I’ll publish the rest of the post somewhere in the second week of February 2017, but not before.

Update #

Here’s the promised article (better late than never, right?): Why Mastodon